Attackers Kill 6 at Islamic University in Pakistan, Mystifying Students

Security officials looked through a hole caused by a suicide bombing at an Islamic university in Islamabad on Tuesday.Credit
Adrees Latif/Reuters

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The International Islamic University here, one of the country’s premier schools, prides itself as a unique center of learning that combines “the essentials of the Islamic faith with the best of modern knowledge,” as its Web site says.

So on Tuesday afternoon, when two suicide attackers struck this conservative gender-segregated campus simultaneously, killing six people, many of the students and residents of Islamabad were perplexed.

The attackers’ bombs ripped through a cafeteria for female students, two of whom were among the dead, and destroyed an office in the Shariah and law department in a second building. Dozens were wounded.

“When I heard that it was Islamic University, I wondered why an Islamic institution would come under attack,” said Erum Yasir, 32, who was visiting Islamabad from her home in New Jersey.

If the militants are striving to enforce religion, why attack an Islamic university of all places, she asked. The answer, she figured, was that the militants just needed a target and had stopped caring what the target was.

Attacks like this one, following far larger ones in the last two weeks at security installations and in crowded marketplaces have increasingly soured public opinion of the Taliban.

While anti-Americanism still runs high, and while there remains support for some militant groups that are considered allies of the state, there is also support building for the military’s campaign to squeeze the Taliban militants who have used Pakistan’s tribal areas as a base to train and dispatch their suicide bombers.

Syed Fakhr Hasan, 24, a student at the university who is pursuing a master’s degree in Arabic, and who is a member of the youth wing of an Islamic political party, said the attackers were maligning the name of Islam.

He was in his dorm room when two loud explosions rocked the surroundings and “everything shook for a while,” he said.

He and his friends ran outside and saw their fellow students lying wounded in pools of blood. Windows were blown out. Shards of glass littered the floor. Smoke filled the corridors. “Three of our brothers are in a critical condition,” Mr. Hasan said somberly.

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He said that security arrangements at the university were weak. “They are working against Islam,” he said referring to the attackers.

The campus, on the outer edges of Islamabad, is an impressive, spacious set of dark brick buildings. University officials said the campus had an enrollment of more than 12,000 students, including about 5,500 women and Muslim students from 47 other countries, including more than 500 from China.

“International Islamic University represents the sphere of deliberation and institutionalized religion which attacks the very notion of militant warfare that is being espoused by groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban that see themselves as counterrevolutionary forces,” said Rafia Zakaria, a columnist for Dawn, the country’s most prestigious daily newspaper.

“They are not for the academic erudite Islam of the university,” Ms. Zakaria said. “They want Islam to be in the battleground, not in the halls of learning.”

One of the suicide bombers had wrapped a shawl around himself and tried to force his way into the cafeteria, witnesses said. When he was stopped, he immediately detonated the explosives strapped to his body.

The campus is near a police installation, which many students assumed, when they heard the explosions, was the target.

Pakistani officials, including the interior minister, Rehman Malik, were quick to link the attacks to the Pakistani military operation in South Waziristan, where thousands of troops began an offensive against the Taliban and Al Qaeda on Saturday.

“The attack here is to tell the Muslims of the world that Pakistan is not safe for anyone,” Mr. Malik said. “This cannot be the work of any Pakistani or any Muslim.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 21, 2009, on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Attackers Kill 6 at Islamic University in Pakistan, Mystifying Students. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe